All posts tagged Qualcomm

Last year, a Chinese magazine with ties to the Communist party identified “eight guardian warriors” – U.S. companies that, it said, “have seamlessly infiltrated China.” Since then, a number of the “guardian warriors,” which include IBM, Google, Intel, Apple and Microsoft, have run into problems in China, one of the world’s biggest tech markets. In many cases, it isn’t clear why. Here’s a rundown of how the companies are faring. Read More »

Makers of chips for personal computers briefly engaged in a race to pack many calculating engines on each piece of silicon. Somewhat surprisingly, that race is recurring in pocket-sized devices, and Taiwan’s MediaTek is not about to be left out.

The company, originally known for chips used in low-end phones for emerging countries, this week is providing more evidence of a strategy shift with a heavy-duty smartphone chip with eight processor cores. Read More »

Even as Samsung Electronics Co.’s share price has bounced back in recent days, stock analysts have been turning more cautious on the company’s prospects.

C.W. Chung, who covers the South Korean tech giant for Nomura, lowered his target price on the company on Thursday, arguing that the gap between Samsung and “second-tier” rivals like LG Electronics and HTC is shrinking even faster than expected—a trend that will hurt Samsung’s smartphone sales and profitability.

Chung came to his conclusion after picking up LG’s latest flagship smartphone, the G3, which he said closed the gap with Samsung’s top-tier devices and reminded him of the personal computer business, where hardware manufacturers struggled to eke out a profit selling computers with Intel chips and Microsoft Windows. Read More »

Nvidia has been jostling with other chip makers to supply key components for smartphones and tablets. That’s a tough market, and the Silicon Valley company has decided to concentrate on where it has the most muscle.

That would be devices that are especially tailored for playing videogames, building on the graphics technology for rendering three-dimensional images that has long been at the core of Nvidia’s business. Read More »

Many companies entering new markets don’t show profit, but their revenue growth looks impressive on a percentage basis. Not so with Intel’s business of selling chips for smartphones and tablets, whose results the company broke out for the first time Tuesday.

The company, which has long tried to diversify away from chips for PCs, reported that revenue for what it now calls the mobile and communications group totaled $156 million, 61% less than the year-earlier period. Read More »

Wireless devices in the home and office have steadily gotten faster. But raw speed doesn’t address the delays caused by an increasing number of gadgets jostling for a share of the airwaves.

That traffic jam is likely to get worse, as the average home fills up with more wireless devices–and more of them seek to move around high-quality video. Broadcom and Qualcomm are stepping in with competing solutions. Read More »

Micromax Informatics, a privately held Indian handset maker, is eyeing a stake purchase in struggling South Korean peer Pantech, in which Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics own a stake, people familiar with the situation said Monday.

Pantech, after struggling to eke out a profit in the global smartphone market, decided last year that it will focus on domestic sales only. But competition in its home market hasn’t been easy with Samsung and LG aggressively churning out new models, leading the company to seek help from its creditors in February. The company is currently under review by its creditors to find an optimal way to restructure its massive debt of more than $1 billion.

“Merger and acquisition is being reviewed as a promising way to [revive] the company,” one person familiar with the matter said. The person said while it would be favorable for Pantech to be acquired by another Korean company there hasn’t been much interest. Read More »

When it comes to semiconductors, India has generally delivered technology ordered up by big foreign companies. Ineda Systems, a startup with some big-name backers, is breaking from that pattern to develop its own chips for wearable devices.

The company, with about 180 engineers in Hyderabad, on Tuesday is describing its product plans along with $17 million in new funding from sources that include investment arms of Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm. Read More »

It’s often said that consumers don’t care about the processors in their smartphones, at least not the way users compared chips in their PCs. To judge by the action in Barcelona this week, that assumption may be fading.

Semiconductor companies including Qualcomm, Intel and MediaTek are using Mobile World Congress for product announcements that seem tailored for people who like to brag about handset specs. Somewhat surprisingly, many of those people seem to be in China and other emerging economies, where a technology-aware middle class is growing. Read More »

Qualcomm has a dominant position in smartphones, and has made headway in tablets, too. But there are two other big markets the chip maker is focusing on at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show–cars and TVs. Read More »